Share your story and you could be featured in an Applied Innovations Case Study or Article? Selected customers receive FREE promotion and backlinks to their website. We need all kinds of case studies and customer testimonials to help us illustrate the Applied Innovations value proposition, so why not yours?

Just fill out the form below and we’ll follow up with you regarding your story.

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You’ll be spotlighted in an upcoming customer newsletter and promoted throughout our website.

Cloud Computing versus Cloud-Based Infrastructure

Fundamentally, the Cloud refers to the use of software, tools, infrastructure or information that is remote-based, rather than locally. As opposed to desktop-server-based computing, Cloud computing means you don’t have to download, install or store any software on your computer, not even a JAVA Script. Everything is accessed through a browser over the Internet. Cloud-based infrastructure takes this a step further by using the Internet to control and communicate with virtual and literal machines located remotely.

Ubiquity of Cloud Computing and Cloud-Based Services

Whether you know it or not, you’re already deep in the Clouds! Your website, email, blog and shopping cart hosted with Applied Innovations are all on the Cloud. So essentially, the Cloud is just a new spin on the whole concept of the “World Wide Web.”

Some of the most ubiquitous Cloud-based services include:

• Social and business networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace and Meetup
• Video and photo sharing services like YouTube, Vimeo, Snapfish and Flickr
• Ecommerce sites such as eBay, Craigslist, Etsy
• Social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and Stumbled Upon
• Ranking and directory sites such as Yelp, CitySearch and Trip Advisor
• Blogging and micro-blogging services like WordPress, BlogSpot and the media darling Twitter
• Wiki sites like Wikipedia
• Webmail services like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and all the rest
• Google Docs and other “SaaS” applications
• Online banking and ecommerce
• Plus a variety of e-services such as eVite, eGreetings, eBates, eTrade, Pandora and iTunes, to name just a few.

While most of these Cloud-based services are free or at least have a free basic offering, many provide a paid subscription level for additional functionality. And in fact, the advantage of this subscription-based model is one of the reasons many Cloud applications are so appealing to businesses. Instead of making a major initial out-of-pocket investment in hardware or software, a business is able to license or subscribe for only what they need, when they need it.

Advantages of Cloud-Based Infrastructure

Similar to Cloud-based services, where you “pay as you go,” Cloud-based infrastructure offers the same advantage. As such, economy is a major factor in driving the adoption of Cloud-based infrastructure, but other advantages also weigh in. Some of these advantages are why you chose Applied Innovations as your hosting provider, but you may not realize the comparative advantages of the different hosting solutions you can choose from. For example, consider these hosting scenarios:

• With a Shared hosting plan, you don’t have to know anything about System Administration, server operations or domain management. All you have to do is load your site and go! Many people get a Shared plan and never feel the need to look at other solutions. Others start with Shared and eventually graduate to a more robust platform that serves their growing needs.
• A VPS hosting plan allows you to quickly and easily scale resources up and down to accommodate business fluctuations, such as seasonal variations. Again, this means you only pay for what you need. If you purchase an in-house box or commit to a Dedicated server hosting plan with the capacity to support your highest traffic demands, you’ll be overpaying during your slow season.
• If you need the resources and flexibility of a VPS or Dedicated plan, Applied Innovations also offers a fully-managed “Server Concierge” program so you can leave all the System Administration and monitoring to us. Think of it as Shared hosting on steroids (only legal!)
• Dedicated hosting plans give you complete control over your hosting environment without any of the added overhead of maintaining a datacenter, security, networks and the like. But while you have complete control, you have less scalability and flexibility than you’d get with a VPS.

At the end of the day, the Cloud is just a metaphor for all the technology that is out there and accessible over the Internet that can offer you greater capabilities, flexibility, power, performance, and competitive advantage. And Applied Innovations is here to bring it all right to your desktop. Look for more Cloud-based opportunities, products and services from AppliedI.net soon.

What is an EV SSL? How does it benefit ecommerce websites?

Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates are the highest assurance certificate. The green address bar assures website visitors that they are transacting on a highly trusted and secured domain. This visual assurance is ideal for ecommerce sites that want to increase trust, reduce shopping cart abandonment and build long-term customer loyalty.

The EV SSL certificate was designed to strengthen e-commerce security and combat phishing attacks to make EV SSL the most complete SSL certificate available. Visual assurance helps e-commerce merchants increase trust, reduce shopping cart abandonment, and build long-term revenue.

Comodo, a registered Certificate Authority (CA) performs a rigorous validation to verify every EV SSL certificate. This ensure that the company behind the site complies with all Extended Validation minimum standard. These strict guidelines help keep the green address bar associated with only the most reputable and reliable organizations to maintain the highest level of security and trust with visitors.

How this Promotion Works

Purchase a Comodo SSL certificate through Appliedi.net and you’ll receive a Free EV Upgrade when you log into your Comodo account. This is HUGE annual savings and will help increase online shopper trust and conversions!

Those customers who take advantage of this offer will receive a free EV SSL certificate up to 2 years. Their original certificate order is still valid and can be used, but those who meet EV requirements will proudly display their EV. Once you see the benefits of EV, we’re convinced you’ll never go back to standard SSL!

Just fill out the short form below and one of our account managers will follow up with you shortly.

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Are you using the power of email marketing to engage your customers? Remember, your existing customer base is often fertile territory for cross-selling related and supporting products and services, as well as UP-selling higher service levels or next generation products. We have two excellent alternatives to suggest.

iContact

iContact is an affordable subscription-based service we use ourselves for all customer communications. There are a ton of predesigned HTML templates, and it has excellent tracking capabilities for evaluating open rates, click-throughs, and bounce-backs. Check out our recent iContact blog article for more information or just sign up for a FREE one-month test account.

MailChimp

MailChimp is free for up to 6,000 messages per month and it will store up to 1,000 subscribers. There are also a whole range of paid subscription options that start at $15.00 per month offering additional message delivery and subscriber storage. It’s a great little application that could be the perfect stepping stone in starting up an email marketing campaign or customer relationship management practice to support your business. Check out MailChimp and sign up for free.

Whatever solution you choose, be sure to develop a thoughtful strategy and tactical plan for engaging your customer base for increased revenue. Think about a regular newsletter, timely bulletins or regular promotions to offer special value to this highly-valuable list.

Reminder to Current AppliedI.net Mail List Manager Users: AppliedI.net will be discontinuing our in house mail listmanager service (http://listmanager.appliedi.net/) beginning January 1, 2011. When we first offered this mail listmanager, there weren’t a lot of alternatives out there, and it was a nice added value we could provide for our customers. But these days, web-based email tools have come a long way; they are inexpensive (or even FREE!) as well as being more robust, user-friendly and feature-rich than anything we can offer. This doesn’t impact most of our customers, but for those it does affect, we’ve got two great alternatives to suggest.

The Indianapolis GiveCamp

Indy GiveCamp is a weekend-long collaboration between local developers, designers, database administrators, and non-profits. It is an opportunity for the technical community to celebrate and express gratitude for the contributions of these organizations by contributing code and technical know-how directly towards the needs of the groups.

The Significance of Applied Innovations Sponsorship

Applied Innovations, Windows Hosting Experts, is pleased to once again have the opportunity to help sponsor a GiveCamp event as official hosting sponsor.  GiveCamps are interesting in that you bring a group of diverse individual developers each with different backgrounds and expertise together to help a series of worthy charities solve a business related problem.  Because the developers can come from different backgrounds and have different skillsets and are building a solution in such an abbreviated period of time it’s really important they have a wide range of tools available to them. It’s this need that makes Applied Innovations an ideal sponsor!  You see, Applied Innovations is offering free shared hosting accounts to all of the charities. Each shared hosting account includes support for:

• ASP
• ASP.NET 2.0, 3.5, 4.0
• ASP.NET MVC 1.0, MVC 2.0
• PHP w/FastCGI enabled
• MySQL 5.X databases
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 & 2005

And the list goes on and on. The beauty is that because we provide support for such a robust and broad range of programming languages the developers are able to use the best tool for the job and aren’t locked into using something they may not be familiar with or experts in.

The Charities being Helped in Indiana

Marion County Commission on Youth (MCCOY)

MCCOY champions the positive development of youth through leadership on key issues and support of the youth worker community. Established as an independent not-for-profit organization in 1993 after several years in city-county government, MCCOY serves as the catalyst for positive youth development, working with youth serving agencies, youth workers and the entire community to make sure that every young person has access to the supports, opportunities and experiences necessary to become a positve, productive and contributing adult.

The Haven Youth Center

The Haven is a non-for-profit drop-in youth center located in Martinsville, Indiana. They cater to middle and high school aged youth. The center is open for middle school youth right after school and for high school youth on Friday nights. They provide a safe place for youth to hang out with their friends while offering various programs throughout the year. They offer drug, alcohol, and tobacco prevention programs a couple of times each year. The Haven’s main goal is to simply give youth an alternative to going home to an empty house where temptations may lurk. They encourage youth to be the best they can be, and offer some incredible adult mentors to be readily available for the youth to play games with or talk if they need to.

Shepherd’s Center of Hamilton County

The Shepherd’s Center of Hamilton County, founded in 1985, is a non-profit organization whose Mission is to support and empower older adults to have enriched lives while maintaining independent lifestyles. The Shepherd’s Center of Hamilton County is a affiliate of the Shepherd’s Center of America which was founded by Dr. Elbert Cole in 1975. We fulfill our Mission through two primary programs: Community Caring and Together Today. Through Community Caring, volunteers are matched with homebound and isolated seniors (65 years and over), to provide FREE services so that the seniors can live independently in their own homes for as long as possible. (Services include friendly visitors, home repair, house cleaning, yard work, and more). We reach those people who are financially fragile, physically/mentally impaired and who have few options for assistance. Through Together Today, seniors 55 and older get together on a regular basis for fellowship and to engage in fun, educational, and healthy activities. This program allows seniors to meet with friends new and old on a regular basis, and to look forward to participating in activities every week. For more information and/or to check our website, please visit www.shepherdscenterofhamiltoncounty.org.

NuAfrica, Inc.

We provide water and education to the impoverished. Our serving started in 2008 in Mali, West Africa, the 3rd poorest country in the world. On 1/1/10, we dug a solar-powered well for 3,000 people who’s nearest access to clean water was previously a 7 mile walk. Our annual fundraiser, Drill4Water, is a tennis gathering at Carmel Racquet Club, where we raise money with volunteer pros drilling players on donated courts, serve dinner, and hold a silent auction. Each May, we also do a "locker clean-out," at Carmel High School. We take our children’s basically new pencils, pens, spiral notebooks and transport them to Mali village children who have no supplies at school. Finally, we collect agricultural supplies (seeds & tools) from Brebeuf Jesuit soccer families and transport them to Mali as well.

Northside Twins & Multiples

Northside Twins & Multiples (Formerly Charter Chapter Mother of Twins Club) is an non-profit organization with over 120 members. We offer monthly support groups, semi-annual clothing and equipment sales, educational/social activities, and many other club benefits. We believe the best advice on raising multiples comes from those members who have already lived the experience. We are committed to service projects in the community and have sponsored park-clean-ups, holiday giving projects, baskets for premature babies and charity walks.

The Tina Marie Arens Foundation

"Helping Single Mothers in Need." The Tina Marie Arens Foundation is a nonprofit organization providing counseling, education and financial assistance for single mothers, giving them a chance to fight against addiction and it’s threat to the health and wellfare of their children. Through outreach and consultation, we also seek to educate the community about the issues of alcoholism and addiction and its impact on all our lives. Our programs and services are designed to contribute to a significant reduction in the legacy affect of addiction and to help break the intergenerational cycle of substance abuse.

Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic

The Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic (the Clinic) promotes justice through both legal representation and preventive law education to Indianapolis’ low-income population. Since opening its doors in 1994, clients whose income is at or below 125% of the federal poverty level have received critically-needed legal services regardless of religious affiliation. The Clinic has a broad civil practice representing low-income clients in the areas of family law, immigration, wills and estates, housing, landlord/tenant disputes, debt and bankruptcy, tax controversies, and other civil areas. In addition to legal representation, the Clinic also regularly hosts preventive legal education workshops and provides printed materials in English, Spanish, and two Burmese dialects to increase awareness of the legal rights and responsibilities of low-income families and individuals. Currently, the Clinic operates eleven (11) neighborhood-based intake sites throughout the Indianapolis area to ensure services are convenient and accessible to low-income residents. Furthermore, the Clinic collaborates with other local non-profit organizations—including local homeless shelters, Latino-multi-service centers, and domestic violence programs—to make critically-needed legal services more accessible to low-income individuals.

Autism Advocates of Indiana

The mission of Autism Advocates of Indiana (AAI) is to increase and broaden public knowledge and awareness of the behaviors, social issues and emotional needs of individuals on the autism spectrum so that all individuals can participate in and contribute to our community without fear of bias or loss of individuality. We carry out our mission through funds from the annual "Answers for Autism Walk" and contributions from private organizations. It is our intention to use the proceeds from this event to promote the advancement of autism research and provide grants for programs in Indiana that serve individuals on the autism spectrum and increase public awareness. Proceeds from the Answers for Autism Walk will help Indiana families touched by autism in many ways. Since 2001, Autism Advocates of Indiana has been able to contribute $205,000 to national research, $260,347 in grants to community organizations across Indiana that provide programming or supports for individuals with autism. Currently, 1 in every 110 or 1% of American children has a diagnosis of autism, including 1 in 70 boys. There is no cure for Autism. Though various treatments and therapies may provide some children with advancements, research and programming are limited due to lack of available funds.

What you can do to help.

1. 1. If you’re interested in volunteering for the indy givecamp 2010, visit: http://indygivecamp.org/Volunteer. 

2. 2. If, a givecamp sounds like a great idea and you’re interested in coordinating one in your local area, visit the national givecamp website: http://www.givecamp.org/

I hope if you are considering a givecamp that you’ll reach out to your friends here at Applied Innovations, www.appliedi.net and allow us the privilege to sponsor the givecamp with you.

Finally, I’d just like to compliment Jay Harris from Arana Software for all the work he’s put in on coordinating multiple givecamps including this one.

The outlook is good, with a growth forecast at 15% for online sales, versus just over 2% overall. For many companies, holiday revenues represent up to 40% of their annual sales, with the overall percentage being 20% across all retail.

Let’s clarify some terms: What is Black Friday? Cyber Monday?

The term Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – may sound ominous, but it’s actually a great day in the retail world. In fact, it so dubbed because it marks a critical point in the retail revenue cycle, since so many stores go from being “in the red” to being “in the black”—i.e. making a profit. As the Internet became ubiquitous, we were introduced to Cyber Monday, the first Monday after Thanksgiving. This is considered the ecommerce equivalent to Black Friday.

Bullet Points

There’s always plenty of hyperbole around what to expect from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but let’s focus specifically on some of the takeaways relevant to Ecommerce:

• Integrated Marketing Messaging Across All Media – “We believe that the retailers that have integrated marketing messages where their Facebook pages, website and in-store presences share a common campaign or theme will be the big winners this holiday season,” said Alison Paul, retail practice head for Deloitte LLP in an article published by Internet Retailer in September of this year.
• Make it Easy for Customers to Reach You - Ecommerce sites need to be sure they take every opportunity to tell customers how to reach them. Internet Retailer recommends putting your phone number and e-mail address at the top of every web page. As reported in an article published by IR earlier this month: “Don’t make it hard for your customers to find you and talk to you,” says Luis Hernandez Jr., CEO of TheMotorBookstore.com, which sells repair manuals and how-to books.
• Leverage All the Channels Available to You- Ecommerce companies are well positioned to take advantage of new trends in consumer behavior like mobile commerce to drive sales and provide added service to customers who want to shop anytime, anywhere. “While consumers have shown they are once again willing to spend on what’s important to them, they will still be very conscientious about price,” said Jack Kleinhenz, Ph.D., chief economist for the National Retailer Federation. “Retailers are expected to compensate for this fundamental shift in shopper mentality by offering significant promotions throughout the holiday season and emphasizing value throughout their marketing efforts.”
• Lessons Learned from Ecommerce Trends in 2009
  • With more than 100 million shoppers in the US expected to be online on Cyber Monday, make sure your website can handle the traffic volume. You don’t want to miss out on revenue just because your site stalls. If you’re concerned about this, call our team at 866-706-8691 and ask to speak with a sales consultant to discuss your options.
  • Promote, Advertise and Optimize. People want to know what you have to sell them. Don’t make it hard to find you! Whether they’re on directories, local listings or doing a query on a search engine, you need to be wherever people are looking for your product or service.
  • Be ready early and keep your eye on the ball through the end of the year. Consumers start their holiday shopping well before Halloween and continue into the New Year.
  • Leverage Social Media. If you have not yet ventured into the Social Media Blogosphere, Carpe Diem! If you’ve made a tentative foray into the land of tweets and likes, get on it and stay on it. It’s all about being where your customers are.
  • Put your best Promo forward. Think about offering free shipping, a one day sale, a gift with purchase, a charitable donation with purchase, a percentage or volume discount. Whatever you do, promote it on your website, through advertisements, on Social Media, and directly via email to your subscriber base? Don’t have an opt-in email list. Start one NOW!

Ecommerce Statistics from 2009

Purchasing Behavior

Why Consumers Prefer to Shop Online Rather Than in Stores During the Holidays

• 2 in 5 Number of Americans who shopped online for holiday purchases in 2009
• 56% Consumers who said that everyday low prices or sales were the biggest influence in deciding where to shop
• 20% Percentage of people who said Internet advertising influenced their purchasing decisions

Sources: BIGresearch and Shop.org eHoliday survey, 2009

What Influences Consumers’ Purchasing Decisions

• 42% Percentage of holiday shoppers who shopped online last holiday season
• 91.5% Percentage who shopped from a home computer on Cyber Monday

From the National Retailers Federation

People with Online Access at Work who Shopped from the Office Last Holiday Season

• 96.5 Millions of people who shopped online on Cyber Monday last year
• 41.5% Percentage of people who shopped early in the morning on Cyber Monday
• 92% Percentage of people who had not finished their holiday shopping by Cyber Monday

Sources: BIGresearch and Shop.org eHoliday survey, 2009

Ecommerce Trends

• 47% Percentage of ecommerce companies who used social media more in 2009 than in previous years
• 79% Percentage of online retailers that offered free shipping last holiday season
• 34% Percentage of ecomm companies who started holiday promotions earlier in 2009
• 77% Percentage of websites who sold gift cards or gift certificates online in the 2009 holiday season
• 87% Percentage of online retailers who promoted special Cyber Monday deals in 2009

Online Retailers’ Cyber Monday Promotions

Sources: BIGresearch and Shop.org eHoliday survey, 2009

Join the AppliedI Affiliate Program and Start Earning Cash Now!

Free to sign up and easy to get started making extra cash. No heavy lifting required

As an Applied Innovations Affiliate, you’ll place a simple image and on your website that links back to AppliedI.net. Whenever a visitor from your site signs up for hosting with AppliedI, you get paid! It’s just that easy.

Better yet, when that person becomes an affiliate and refers other people to Applied Innovations, you’ll get paid for those referrals too.

How Does It Work?

1 Once you join the Applied Innovations Affiliate Program you’ll get your own username and password to log into our affiliate control panel system.

2 From within the affiliate control panel, you’ll have access to a variety of links, graphics and text ads to choose from. You simply copy and paste some HTML code onto your website, and you’re done.

3 Then, when a visitor clicks on the link on your website and signs up for hosting with Applied Innovations, you’ll be paid up to $65.00!

4 Just for joining the Applied Innovations Affiliate Program, we’ll jumpstart your account with $25.00.

Real Time Tracking and Reporting

You’ll have 24/7 access to the affiliate control panel via your private login to check your sales, traffic, account balance and see just how your ads and banners are performing.

Applied Innovations Affiliate Program Details

Commission Type: The program is a Monthly Tiered Pay-Per-Sale Program.

Payouts: 1-5 Approved Sales in a Month: $25.00 Each Sale!
6-10 Approved Sales in a Month: $45.00 Each Sale!
11+ Approved Sales in a Month: $65.00 Each Sale!

Other details: $25.00 USD – Just for signing up!
$250.00 USD – Minimum balance required for Payout
Payments are made on the 15th of each month.

Get Started Today!

Five Simple Things to Prepare Your Ecommerce Site for a Cyber Monday!

If you have a seasonal ecommerce business, here are just a handful of things to prepare your website for Cyber Monday

1. Update all your product images

Everyone knows a picture speaks a thousand words. But you are probably so familiar with your own site that you don’t even LOOK at the photos. Well, now is the time to take a careful audit of your site to ensure all the images are current, high quality, and the most effective representation of your product as possible. While you’re at it, make sure there is a keyword rich ALT tag for every image, and a caption as well.

2. Audit your purchase funnel

We talked about this in a recent newsletter, but it bears repeating. How long has it been since you made a purchase on your own website? Better yet, how long since you observed someone entirely unfamiliar with your site as they go through the purchase funnel? This is an immeasurably useful way of evaluating how user-friendly your shopping cart is. Ask yourself at every point in the process: is it clear what I’m supposed to do next? Are there any confusing or potentially misleading elements that might interfere with a purchase completion? You may also want to take a hard look at your shopping cart abandonment rates. While abandonment occurs for any number of reasons, this metric is a potential red flag for problems with the funnel.

3. Benchmark your competitors

Take a good hard look at your top 3 competitors to see what they are doing well. What keywords are they targeting? How does their brand identity and voice compare with yours? Where are they promoting themselves? How is their Social Media presence? What can you do to compete more effectively with them? Try to identify 3 things each competitor is doing well that you can improve on your site or your marketing effort.

4. Build out your Social Media Presence

Do you have a Company LinkedIn profile? How about a Facebook fan page? A YouTube Channel? A Twitter account? If you do nothing else, establish a presence on these 4 Social Media Networks and populate them with content that is timely and relevant to your business. Check out a recently published book called Inbound Marketing to get the foundation for building a very effective Social Media strategy.

5. Develop 1 or 2 special seasonal promotions

There’s nothing like a limited-time-only special deal to compel customers to buy. Create some excitement around your products and services with a seasonal promotion. Consider a gift-with-purchase, a BOGO (buy-one-get-one FREE or buy-one-get-one half off,) a purchase-with-purchase (a discount on a supplemental product or an upgrade) or even make a donation of a fixed amount for every sale.

Do you have your own “Five Simple Things…” list to share? We’d love to see it. We’ll even feature you in an upcoming newsletter and on our blog, with an SEO-friendly link back to your website! Send your submissions to sales@appliedi.net.

And may we wish a Very Merry Cyber Monday to all!

1) Can your customers find you on the web?

• Update and augment all your directory listings and local search profiles. You should do this regularly, so you might want to schedule it as a quarterly task.
• Go to your Google Webmaster Central account and check out all the available tools and analytics. If you don’t have an account, get one at http://www.google.com/webmasters/
• If you’ve never done so, consider testing a small pay per click (PPC) campaign. The process of evaluating keywords and competitive campaigns is a great exercise for thinking about how your customers look for the products and services you offer.
• Make sure you have Title Tags and Meta Descriptions for all your pages for Search Engine Optimization. Consider revising them to include more relevant keywords identified during your keyword discovery for the PPC campaign.

2) Can buyers easily and intuitively find what they’re looking for and complete a purchase on your site?

• Are product descriptions and photos totally up to date?
• Are there any broken links or dead pages?
• Do you have onsite search capability? If not, consider integrating one of the many plug ins available.
• Audit your own purchase funnel. Better yet, have someone else do it and watch them while they do it. This means having someone make a purchase on your website while you observe. Have them walk through it “out loud,” by literally articulating the process: “okay, so I want to buy this, but where’s the ‘purchase’ button?” Make sure it works the way it’s supposed to. And also see if there are ways to make it simpler or more intuitive.

3) Is your website able to support increased traffic? Is it sluggish and slow to load?

This is where AppliedI can really help you out. Check out these recent articles for a little more info: Upgrading from Shared to VPS is Painless at AppliedI and Case Study: How Hats Plus Upgraded Their Site for Growth. Another article that might be of interest is in our Newsletter Archive, titled 10 Reasons You Need a VPS . Or, just call our experienced sales team at 866-706-8691 and we’ll help you figure out if a fully-managed Server Concierge VPS is the right next step for your ecommerce site.

About Hats Plus

Chicago-based Hats Plus, Ltd. has operated a successful retail store since 1987, and a growing ecommerce presence since 2004. Currently generating about 50% of all sales, the website has experienced year over year growth in the “high double digits” and therefore may soon overshadow brick and mortar revenues significantly.

Hats Plus is a premier online resource for men’s hats of all types: Summer and Straw Hats, Leather Hats and Caps, Fedoras, Panamas and Cowboy hats. They offer a very large selection – over 600 products – and maintain a good inventory of everything offered.

“We offer quality, value and service at a fair price,” states Martin Mann, president of Hats Plus, Ltd. “It’s all about the ‘long tail’ and providing a wide range of specific items to a thin market that’s quite geographically dispersed. This allows us to be very competitive, and it also means we rely heavily on our website.”

Finding a Solid Hosting Partner

Mann tells the disturbing story of how his original shopping cart software (which was also his hosting provider) went out of business a couple of years ago, forcing him to find a new solution FAST. That’s when he found Applied Innovations.

“Looking at web hosting from a business person’s perspective, safety, security and reliability are the priorities,” Mann said. “Applied Innovations had a solid reputation and a good track record hosting ASPdotNetStorefront, so they were a great fit.”

The Next Step in Growing Revenues Online: VPS

“As our online revenues continued to grow, we realized performance and downtime would be increasingly important factors impacting our business success,” Mann continued. “We never had more than an hour or two of downtime on our shared plan, but we had to ask ourselves ‘What if?’”

Mann was attracted to AppliedI’s VPS solution because it delivers several key benefits:

• Minimizing downtime: High Availability promised automated failover.
• Achieving maximum performance: On-demand resources would provide the flexibility and scalability for high traffic periods and long term growth.
• Finding a hassle-free solution: With the fully-managed Server Concierge option, he doesn’t have to be his own IT guy.

A Smooth Transition from Shared to VPS

Making a seamless transition was of critical importance. With half their revenues coming from the Hats Plus website, they couldn’t afford downtime during migration. So Applied Innovations set up a parallel site on the VPS and to ensure it was working smoothly before flipping the switch. The staging site was up for about three weeks, during with all the files were copied over and the VPS was reimaged. Once everything was functioning properly, the DNS was switched over and the new VPS site went live.

“As a small company without an IT department, I needed a hosting partner who will take charge. I don’t want to have to worry about backups, downtime, security issues, viruses, etc. I know about a lot of this but I don’t want to become an expert. And I’m willing to pay a fair price for it,” concludes Mann. “With Applied Innovations, we discovered a superior solution that gives us complete confidence going into the busy holiday ecommerce season.”

Want to benefit from near zero downtime thanks to High Availability clustering and leverage the instant scalability of cloud hosting without having to become a server administration expert. Contact our sales team at sales@appliedi.net or 866.706.8691 and be ready for the busiest E-Commerce season ever!